


In Fits and Starts

by catalinacat



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Miscommunication, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 08:38:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5659804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catalinacat/pseuds/catalinacat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe knows how Finn feels about Rey. But that won’t stop him from holding on as long as he possibly can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Fits and Starts

**Author's Note:**

> this is... so extra. for all my fellow people out there who shamelessly want to see Poe suffer.  
> fuckin totally unedited, will probably regret posting this in the morning ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> have not written fic in literal years, wish me luck

Poe moves into Finn’s room in increments.

He leaves a toothbrush in the little attached bathroom first. It would be easy to explain away as a genuine accident if Finn asked, not that he ever did.

His jacket has already taken up permanent residence in Finn’s space, so he doesn’t think a shirt or two, or an extra pair of pants will get noticed, and Finn doesn’t say anything about that, either.

There’s a painting Poe has always loved, one of the few things he has from his mother, that he lugs around with him whenever the Resistance changes camps. It’s of his childhood home on Yavin 4 – a smallish house, with a tree out front that always seemed to be in bloom. He presents it to Finn as a gift without telling him what it is, and Finn accepts it with a warm smile and hangs it up in the center of the main wall in his room.

Poe can see it when he falls asleep at night, Finn still wrapped around him, and sometimes it feels like his heart is going to burst.

\-------

Jessika notices, of course. There are few things that happen at base camp that she doesn’t know about.

She comes alongside him as he’s walking across the tarmac and he’s only surprised it hasn’t happened sooner.

“Word is you’re all shacked up with the Trooper. You’ve broken a lot of hearts taking yourself off the market, you know.”

Poe’s stomach drops and his voice comes out a little sharper than he intended.

“Don’t—don’t call him that. _Trooper._ That’s not what he is anymore.”

Jessika stops walking and throws out a hand to catch his arm. He turns to face her, sighing and rolling his eyes to try to play it off, but she knows him too well. So he avoids her gaze.

“What am I not seeing, Dameron? You’re the biggest romantic in the galaxy and the fact that you’re head over heels for this guy is the worst kept secret in the Resistance. I would have thought this was a positive development.”

Poe smiles, and it feels a little brittle, but it’s there.

“No, of course, Jessika. You’re right. It’s just… didn’t get much sleep last night. You know I hate sitting idle, and it’s been ages since our last mission.”  
Jessika rolls her eyes at him.

“Whatever. Keep it to yourself for now, then. But I’ll figure it out. You know I will.”

That doesn’t bother Poe. It’s only a matter of time until Rey comes back, and then everyone will figure it out.

\--------

The thing is, Finn is tender and gentle like no one has ever been to Poe before.

Poe has cultivated a sort of playboy-persona, to keep too many people from getting close. Of course, the ones that do get close see how false it it and laugh at how they ever could have believed it.

It suits his purposes, most of the time. He can flirt, as he likes to do, without it meaning anything. And he can sleep with people he knows aren’t It for him, without that meaning anything either.

But it has its downsides.

People always think he wants it hard, fast, impersonal. And he does, he loves it like that. But not every time.

Finn is the only one who holds him in his arms, who pushes into him carefully – like he’s something precious, something to be cherished.

Poe doesn’t know what he’s going to do when it stops.

\--------

The other thing is, Finn talks to him.

Finn talks _all the time._ About anything, everything.

Poe learns that Finn loves the color blue.

_“Like the skies over Jakku,” he says. “It sounds stupid, but I had never seen anything like that. Even our training simulations were black, white, red.”_

He hates the cold, he likes company but not large crowds, he’s wary of authority figures – except for General Organa, who he took an immediately liking to – and he’s eager to try every different type of food he can get his hands on.

_“The nutritional mush they fed us, Poe, you would not believe. That alone was enough to turn a man traitor.”_

While he is surprisingly forthcoming about his time as a Stormtrooper, Finn avoids any and all mention of his life before he was taken by the First Order – Poe isn’t sure what, if anything, he remembers.

Instead, he speaks of the future.

He tells Poe of the places he wants to go, the things he wants to see.

Sometimes he’ll say, _“we have to go here, it looks incredible”_ or _“you’ll fly me over there, right? You know I can’t pilot a kriffing spaceship myself.”_

But he always, _always_ includes Rey when he talks about his future.

\--------

And the last thing is, Poe can’t even blame him.

Rey is incredible, without a doubt.

She was only on the base for a few days before she left to find Skywalker, but even that was more than enough time for Poe to fall a little in love with her himself.

She is more kind than anyone has ever met, stronger than any being he has encountered, and impossibly beautiful.

Poe never stood a chance against someone like her.

\--------

It’s late one afternoon when Poe hears the news – Rey and Chewie are headed back, Luke Skywalker in tow.

Leia delivers the news to the base personally, her smile so uncharacteristically open that Poe can’t even find it within himself to resent the news.

Beside him, Finn whoops with joy, grabbing Poe into a tight hug. The rest of the evening is full of nothing but talk of Rey and Poe does his best to listen. He needs to be supportive, as any good friend would.

That night Finn is ravenous, pulling Poe down onto him and whimpering into his ear. He feels so, so warm. When he finishes, he pulls Finn even closer to him and watches him fall asleep.  
It feels a little like saying goodbye.

The next morning, Finn is gone before Poe wakes up.

This isn’t particularly unusual – Finn hasn’t been able to shake a lifetime of pre-dawn wake-ups and despite Poe’s arduous attempts to convince him to stay in bed, or at least wake Poe up for company, he’s often out long before Poe stumbles out of bed.

But it feels different this morning, because this is the last time Poe is going to wake up in Finn’s bed.

He pulls himself up and looks around. There are more things of his in here than he realized.

He gathers his toothbrush, his clothes hanging in the closet, the kitschy little figurine Jessika got him on her last leave, some spare tools accidentally left in pockets and never returned, the plant on the bedside table.

Poe looks at the painting on the wall, _his_ painting of home and family. He leaves it. It was a gift, after all.

\--------

Poe spends the rest of the day in his own room. It’s not dusty, or anything, but it somehow feels that way – empty, unused – after all the time he spent living elsewhere.

He doesn’t lay in bed all day, although he rather wants to.

Instead, he tinkers with an old-school astromech he found broken in one of the hangars. It’s probably beyond repair, really, but he tries regardless.

It takes him through lunch, into dinner time, before he realizes how much time has passed. He wonders when Rey arrived, he wonders how Finn reacted and if he even realized Poe was missing.

He also hates himself for wondering, for letting his own self-worth be tied up in the judgment of someone else.  
  
He decides to go to the mess hall, even if he doesn’t have much of an appetite. Just before the doors he meets Jessika, headed in his direction.

“Dameron! I was just looking for you, need your help with a finicky X-wing. Come to the hangar with me?”

And Jessika is good, she’s very good. But Poe has been close friends with her for years, and he knows her tells. There’s nothing wrong with a plane, nothing that needs his expertise anyways.

But he can’t imagine why she would be trying to keep him out of the mess-hall. It makes his skin itch and he has an awful feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“I’m headed for food actually,” he says. “But I can come after. Won’t be long.”

He turns before she can say something and pushes through the doors.  
  
The first thing he sees is the table immediately before him, some of the pilots from his squadron. They all look at him, and then immediately look away. The look on their faces is pity, and he sees Snap glance to Poe’s left.

Poe turns his head, ignoring Jessika’s hand pulling on his arm.

It’s Finn and Rey, sitting together. Sitting _so_ close. Talking animatedly, Finn’s head on her shoulder.

Poe turns on his heel, nearly running into Jessika. She’s saying something to him but he can’t manage to understand the words.

He must have made a scene because he can hear Finn now, calling out, “Poe! Poe, come here! Wait till you hear what Rey did!”

Jessika’s face crumples in sympathy, and Poe walks out of the doors.

He goes back to his room, and this time he does fall into the bed.

\--------

It’s not thirty minutes later that there’s a knock on his door.

He opens the door to Finn’s face, inscrutable in it’s expression.

“You moved out,” Finn says. “I went to our room to find you and you moved out.”

Poe does his best to smile, to paste the roguish grin onto his face.

“Didn’t want to make things awkward. Rey’s back now and… well, I don’t know they do it in the First Order but it’s not good practice out here in the real world to invite a girl back to a room you’re still sharing with another guy.”

He expects Finn to laugh, maybe make another one of his jokes about how backwards life as a Stormtrooper was. He expects to have to laugh, to maybe give a friendly pat on the back. He expects to have to force congratulations out of his throat.  
  
Instead, Finn’s eyes roll towards the ceiling and he lets out a violent huff of air.

“You know, Poe, when Jessika Pava just came and _threatened to beat my face in_ for breaking your heart I told her that she was absolutely insane. That she was mistaken, because you would never, ever believe that you were just—just something on the side for me, until Rey came back. And now I’m beginning to see that she was right after all!”

Poe can’t breathe, his chest just keeps constricting.

“I know you love her,” he chokes out. “I understand, I just want you to be happy, and she’s back now---“

“I’m happy with you!” Finn interrupts. “I am happy with _you,_ you idiot! Haven’t I made that clear?”

Poe lets out a shaky laugh. “It’s okay, you don’t have to do this, Finn. I understand – we had fun, you got some… practice. You’ll be able to show Rey a good time now,” he says with an attempt at a grin.

Finn visibly recoils. “Is that what this was to you? Just… some fun?”

Poe feels like he’s drowning, because whatever happens he can’t have that, can’t have Finn think that.

“No! Never, I—Finn. Being with you was _everything_ to me. But you love Rey. The whole base knows it. And I can’t watch you leave me for her, so… so I took care of it for you. There’s nothing in your way now.”

“You idiot!” Finn glares at him, which Poe can honestly say he still was not expecting. “You are an actual idiot. _Kriff,_ you’re worse at communication than I am and I grew up with the First Order, so.”  
  
Poe freezes. He doesn’t really know what to do and everything he does seems to be the wrong thing so he decides to just… not do anything.

“You’re right – I do love Rey. Like a _sister._ Zero romantic attachment. Entirely sibling-like.”

Oh. Oh?

“Which you would _know,_ if you ever decided to use your words and _ask_ me instead of heroically sacrificing yourself!”

And suddenly, Poe feels like a colossal idiot.

He looks up at Finn, who smiles at him. He feels like he can breathe again.

“I… I love you,” Poe whispers.

Finn pulls him close.

“I know.”

And they kiss.


End file.
